Class of 2024/25: Are Last Season’s Relegated Sides the Worst Ever?

Class of 2024/25: Are Last Season’s Relegated Sides the Worst Ever?

Over the past few seasons, the Premier League has become more and more top-half dominant, leaving the three relegated sides to suffer – most barely scrape 30 points at a push. These instances suggest that the constant narrative of 40 points being the “magic” number to secure survival no longer exists, with points totals as low as 30 being enough to survive in three of the last five seasons.

Whether this is because of the way clubs are being run or because of commercial and marketing deals, there is no doubt there is becoming a noticeable difference between the top clubs and the outfits further down the food chain.

In the last two campaigns, a total of zero of the six clubs amassed 30 points, with the 2023/24 sides finishing 18-20th with a cumulative points total of 66, compared to the even worse class of 2024/25, who couldn’t even manage 60 points combined in their 38 league matches, leaving them slapped with the title of the worst relegated sides we have ever seen in the Premier League.

In this piece, Football Park will take an in-depth look at these relegated sides’ performances and compare them to other trios to have been relegated from the top flight.

A Trio of Dismal Campaigns

Last season was the second season in a row, and the third time in Premier League history that all three newly promoted sides suffered immediate relegation after just one season back in the top flight. During this campaign, a new low was set as the three relegated sides amassed just 59 points combined to show for their efforts across the league season.

None of these sides could muster up 40 goals across the season either, with Ipswich topping that list with a measly 36; all three sides defended incredibly poorly too, shipping 80+ each. All sides performed considerably worse than their expected points totals too, although none of them would have been saved by that metric anyway.

Leicester City

We’ll begin with the (slightly) better-performing relegated side from last campaign. The Foxes increased their points tally just 13 times last season. Six wins and seven draws resulted in a poor total of just 25 points across all 38 games.

Managed by three different coaches last campaign, none of them could oversee an improvement in results. Foxes fans saw 113 goals fly in last campaign; however, 70% of those came at the wrong end of the pitch.

It seemed obvious from the get-go that none of these three sides were actually capable of competing in the top flight, as although Leicester were the only side who defended better than xGA, they still conceded the third-most by some margin.

And overall, had the table gone the way it had been expected to, the Foxes would have found themselves dead last on goal difference – so it wasn’t all bad, Leicester fans!

Ipswich Town

We move on to an Ipswich side who, in all fairness, played a blinder, but they were never going to be able to stay afloat in the Premier League – especially considering they had just been promoted in consecutive seasons.

The Tractor Boys collected 22 points, with only four wins in the mix, so many will feel Kieran McKenna’s men were certainly hard done by. Moreover, the East Anglian outfit would have risen a spot had they picked up their 10 extra points that they were ‘expected’ to. Only three other teams could have earned more additional points than Ipswich.

In terms of xG and XGA, Ipswich definitely could have done better. Like their fellow relegated teams, the Tractor Boys weren’t even expected to amass 40 goals, so their 36 doesn’t seem like an awful performance, all things considered. Defensively, however, there were some gaping holes. Towards the top of the table is where you see many sides conceding far fewer goals than expected; however, Ipswich falls on the other side of this coin, as they were exploited five more times than expected.

Southampton

Last but certainly not least, it’s Russell Martin’s more than sorry Saints. It was an abysmal campaign from the south coast side, and Pompey fans would have had their eyes surgically attached to the screen whenever they were on the tele, watching their rivals flirt with Derby County’s lowest points total for most of the season.

It wasn’t until gameweek 36, where a surprise 0-0 draw with Man City was what left Southampton dodging the record set almost two decades ago. This left the Saints collecting a dismal 12 points from their 38 games, 150% less than what they were expected to achieve.

In front of goal, it was also a sad story for Southampton, who generated just 26 goals all campaign – only a small handful of teams have scored fewer across a 38-game campaign in Premier League history.

It didn’t get any better in the defensive third either, as the south coast outfit conceded three more goals than their expected 83.

How Do They Compare?

This piece is, of course, about a trio of poor relegated sides, so although Derby County’s 2007/08 is without a doubt the worst Premier League campaign in its history, Reading and Birmingham City actually made the relegation fight a proper scrap, as both sides were a single point away from survival.

Therefore, in this section, we reach back a further season, to the 2023/24 campaign, where Luton Town, Burnley, and Sheffield United mustered a mere 66 points combined.

Luton Town

Similarly to Ipswich, in the sense that they were a side no one expected to get close to survival, Luton experienced a tough first season in the Premier League.

26 points from their inaugural PL campaign left them 10 points adrift of safety as they picked up just six victories all season. It wasn’t all bad for the Hatters, however, as their 52 goals were more than five other teams in the league, suggesting that if their defense wasn’t on a whole other level deep underground, Luton Town may just have seen one more season in top-flight football.

It was largely through the fault of their defensive issues that their overall performance looked so poor. The Hatters performed 11 points lower than what was expected of them, but it was just certain moments and lapses in concentration that left them leaving a ground empty-handed a whopping 24 times ...

Burnley

... The same number of times as the 19th-placed side, Burnley. How on earth Vincent Kompany managed to scam the job of Bayern Munich boss just weeks after this shocking campaign is beyond me.

The side the Belgian coached underperformed even more than Luton Town. Just 24 points is what the Clarets ended with, befittingly the same number of times they left a fixture with a donut.

They did experience a similar season to the Hatters in terms of expected stats; however, their offensive power was supremely lacking, as they scored just 41 times and were only projected to have scored five more. Defensively, however, Burnley did quite well in comparison to what was expected – however, we must remember that conceding 78 goals in a season will not keep you up in the top flight.

Sheffield United

Lastly, enter Sheffield United. Chris Wilder’s Blades had an absolutely shocking time of it last campaign, scraping together just 16 points – half the amount that they were expected to achieve.

28 losses and a record-breaking 104 goals conceded were the standouts for the Blades during a season in which they may as well have not even featured. The pure fact that the Yorkshire-based side was expected to ship 85.4 goals and they actually conceded 104 is absolutely ludicrous.

A -69-goal difference, an abysmal number of times they conceded goals, and their sorry total of just 16 points make them part of another awful trio of sides to be relegated from the Premier League. But are they the worst ever?

Final Verdict

With respect to the league’s competition in the respective season, last campaign without a doubt featured the worst relegated sides in history of the Premier League.

Last season, all three sides had a worse goal difference than -45, with all three teams conceding over 80 goals each. This is made worse by how things didn’t improve offensively, with Ipswich being the standout on just 36 goals.

Furthermore, the three teams' last campaign picked up a measly total of just 59 points combined, in comparison to the 66 collected by the three relegated sides the campaign prior.

These two instances are the worst combined totals by the three relegated sides in Premier League history, illustrating the gap between the newer top-flight sides and the elite, well-established teams, making the challenge that much more difficult to survive in the Premier League—and I doubt that will change too much soon, although Sunderland are definitely giving it a good go so far this time around.